


like fire and powder

by kanayne



Series: terezi's adventures with shakespeare [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, References to Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4096792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanayne/pseuds/kanayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>o god, i have an ill-divining soul</em><br/>rose introduces terezi to romeo and juliet and she actually. likes it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	like fire and powder

**Author's Note:**

> we watched the 1996 version of romeo and juliet in english class and i got inspired because tbh i didn't expect to like it as much as i did and then i started seeing more and more parallels between terezi/vriska and parts of romeo and juliet and i was like hey... i should write about this  
> wow this is just. so incredibly fucking cliché probably

you’re having a movie night with dave and karkat and rose and kanaya, watching the human movie _romeo and juliet_ , which according to dave stars someone named leonardo dicaprio. rose tells you _romeo and juliet_ is a classic love story very well known on earth, originally a play. she says she thinks they were just stupid infatuated teenagers, and that the love story part is overrated, and that you’ll probably think the same thing.

you watch (well, smell and hear) it expecting to agree with her. dave considers putting his arm around you like he’s tried to do a couple times before (“i’m pretty sure that’s what humans do as a casual sign of flushed affection”) but karkat’s there so you don’t let him. anyways, that whole thing with him is winding down for a very certain reason called gamzee makara.

you’re unexpectedly enjoying the movie. usually you’d be laughing at this ridiculously flushed bullshit but for some reason you find it a little endearing. you keep quiet about this, though.

at the end, where he’s about to drink the poison as she’s waking up, you’re surprisingly relieved, assuming that she’ll stop him just in time but—

no. _noooooo_.

“oh what the fuck!” you say.

karkat is crying.

rose laughs. “sorry, i forgot to warn you. they die.”

you’re a little outraged. “that’s bullshit! she was awake already, why didn’t he see that? and why didn’t she hit the poison out of his hand or say something? humans are so fucking weird.”

you got more invested in this than you realized, so you try to cover it up with annoyance over the stupidity of an alien race.

secretly, though, you nab the code for the movie disc and rewatch it on your own. (this time you can lick the screen to get a better picture of what’s going on without anyone complaining.) you’re urging romeo to look down, hoping that juliet will stop him in time but you know what has to happen.

they were stupid teenagers like rose said, and it’s ridiculous and sad and you love it.

when you watch it for the third time, you start to realize something.

friar laurence tells romeo, _these violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume…_

their infatuation, their love, whatever it was? it killed them. they knew each other for less than a week and what, four people died?

this is reminding you of something, _someone_ you’ve been trying and failing to forget, because like romeo and juliet, your love destroys. they’re like you and vriska and your stupid cycle of revenge, the way she hurt everyone around her and the fact that you let her. 

you loved her and you killed her. you would have died had you not done it, so you guess that’s different—romeo and juliet died because they couldn’t live without each other, but with this it was you or vriska, there were two paths, two options, and you chose to live and she had to die.

you still think about that a lot. every time you pass through a dream bubble your stomach flutters with the same fear that you might see her.

after finishing the movie for the third time, you ask rose if she has a copy of the play. she laughs and says of course she does, hands you a huge-ass book she says are all of shakespeare’s plays.

oh, fuck. your ability to understand the human letters is still shit. rose realizes this and tells you she’ll ask karkat if there’s a way to translate it.

you rewatch the movie again while you’re waiting and this time you think about mercutio, who died because of romeo, cursed his best friend in his final moments. romeo couldn’t kill tybalt because he loved juliet, but then tybalt killed mercutio and he decided he had to anyways, even though it would cost him.

if romeo had stabbed mercutio himself, you think you could understand why this too reminds you of vriska. if juliet and tybalt were the same person and mercutio had bronze blood and self-esteem issues, you think you could understand.

rose gets back to you with a freshly alchemized copy of _the complete works of william shakespeare_ in alternian. you retreat to can town to read it.

you inspect the table of contents first. there’s a lot of plays. some of them seem interesting. _romeo and juliet_ starts on page 245.

_dramatis personae_. you figure out pretty easily that this means the characters of the play.

a lot of the lines are the same, but it’s different reading them--you notice more. you move through it quickly.

juliet is younger than fourteen years old. you’re not sure what fourteen is in sweeps. more than six, probably seven or so.

_i have a soul of lead, so stakes me to the ground i cannot move,_ romeo says, then talks about love a little bit.

mercutio tells him, _if love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down._

that’s what you did, and that’s what romeo didn’t do, but you both lost the girl you loved anyway.

you wonder why this story has affected you so much. half a sweep ago you would have been laughing your ass off within two lines. is vriska’s death really enough to change that so dramatically?

you guess it must be.

part of you wants to agree with rose— _you literally met tonight, calm down you’re not in love_ —but the other part has fucked off somewhere that you don’t think you can understand, somewhere soft and sad and gentle.

_parting is such sweet sorrow_ , juliet says. you don’t know why all these romantic lines make you think of vriska serket.

you’ve lost track of time. then again, that doesn’t really matter on the meteor.

you get to the part that first reminded you of vriska—friar laurence saying that violent delights have violent ends. somehow, reading the words makes it feel more powerful.

then mercutio challenges tybalt and gets fucking stabbed because romeo tries to help. _i thought all for the best_ , romeo says, probably devastated.

tybalt comes back and romeo has to forget about love so he can avenge his friend’s death. the stage directions here are simple. _they fight; tybalt falls._

because tybalt first killed mercutio, his death is ruled just (although romeo is still exiled). you wish that made you feel better about what _you_ did in the name of justice.

then back to juliet. she says something that makes you think, illogically, of vriska again. _give me my romeo; and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars…_

this is the type of romantic bullshit you should be laughing at, but instead you think you’re just sad.

_i must be gone and live, or stay and die,_ romeo tells juliet, and she’s trying to convince him to stay longer, refusing to accept the two options. you did not try like she did. you flipped a coin and killed your friend.

you’ve been reading for ages. the mayor is curled up and taking a nap.

the movie didn’t include the scene where her “body” is found, and you’re almost fascinated by it now. human grief is strange.

things begin to fall into their awful places as romeo hears that juliet is dead and buys the poison. you hate knowing what has to happen.

then something unexpected—paris is at the tomb when romeo arrives and they fight. you know how this probably ends, and you’re right. _—paris falls_.

romeo dies. things go a little differently than in the movie, and then juliet wakes up.

_where is my romeo?_ she asks.

juliet dies, stabs herself. you think about vriska and you hate inevitability.

romeo’s mother is dead too, from grief. that brings the death count to six. you’ve got six dead people, too—tavros, nepeta, equius, eridan, feferi, and—

it ends with montague and capulet reconciling in grief. sure, it took the deaths of their children and four other people, but they finally did it. great job, guys! 

_for never was a story of more woe than this of juliet and her romeo,_ the prince says, and then it’s over.

“how’d you like it?” rose asks when you give her the book back.

you shrug. “it was okay.”

she raises an eyebrow. “you can keep the book if you want. you might like some of the other plays. not all of them end like this one does.”

“i’m good,” you say. “maybe some other time.”

“all right,” she says, then seems to hesitate before she adds, “tybalt’s death was deserved, you know. romeo didn’t have much of a choice.”

she’s a little too perceptive for her own damn good.

“he could have thought of something,” you say. “sometimes there’s more choices than you realize.”

rose seems like she wants to argue that point, but you walk away before she can say anything else.

later, you return to what is unofficially your room and find the book waiting for you. you roll your eyes at rose lalonde’s irritating wonderful stubbornness and open the table of contents. you think you’ll try _macbeth_ this time.


End file.
